Stuck
by AtheneDi
Summary: For the Miserable Melody challenge. A one shot focusing on the most miserable day of Emmeline Vance's life.


**A/N: **This is for the **Miserable Melody competition**. The competition was to choose one character from the Harry Potter books and any song to base a one shot on about the most miserable day in their life. I chose Emmeline Vance so I could have a bit of leeway with her character as I know she is not mentioned too much in the books. The song I chose is **How Come The World Won't Stop** by **Anastacia.**

If you read the lyrics the story will make a lot more sense and you will see what gave me the plot bunny for this one shot. The song itself has a bit of an upbeat sound, but the lyrics are rather sad. I do hope I also conveyed that like the song, there can be a bit of hope or an uplifting even in the most miserable of days or lyrics.**  
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><p><strong>August 17th, 1987<strong>

_One year, 52 weeks, 365 Days, 525 948 minutes... One year, 52 weeks, 365 Days, 525 948 minutes... One year, 52 weeks, 365 Days, 525 948 minutes... she is never coming back, never, never, never... One year, 52 weeks..._

The thoughts raced through my mind as I violently pulled at and tossed everything in the room in to one of the trunks I had brought down from the attic. My hands reached, pulled, tore and tossed destructively. None of it mattered anymore, just like _her._ No one but I cared anyways and none of it truly mattered in the grand scheme of this world. The world kept spinning, people kept living, days passed and erased whatever significance she had held in this world. She was a mere passing thought or nothing at all to everyone but me. They kept living, moving, growing and I was still stuck in the day the healers told me she would never go home again. Those words keep spinning in time and only I seem to realize the air has been cold ever since.

As my hands continue tearing and hurriedly packing away everything that never mattered, I silently curse the setting sun. The room is too bright, it is as if the sun streaming in from her window is teasing me that it continues to rise, shine and set for everyone else while I am stuck in a world that feels like constant rain. I turn away from the light like my light turned away from me and continue my task. I move to the bookshelf and begin packing away books when something catches my eye and my breath catches in my throat.

I slowly reach towards a picture in a simple wooden frame I had forgotten I had ever placed in this room. I stroke the frame before cautiously picking it up like it has the power of my undoing. I stare at the picture for a few silent moments before pulling it to my chest and cradling it against my heart while my anger and determination to erase the room and it's content from existence reform in to the familiar haunting pain. My body begins to wrack with sobs I don't think I will ever be strong enough to keep at bay.

"Em?" A familiar voice startles me. With tears streaming down my face I turn to look at the drab-clothed man standing in the doorway who wears an unsure expression.

"You're the only one who came, Remus." I tell him as I slowly move across the room closing the gap between us.

When I had woke this morning, I thought today, the anniversary, would be filled with the same depressing processional of people coming and going to offer support. In those early days I was the poster child for how to deal with loss. I greeted visitors with refreshments and food, I planned the flowers and ensured all of the visitors were comfortable. I moved between relatives and friends handing tissues and consoling them. Now, I was tempted to stay in bed and close my eyes on the people who would surely come. My strength is fleeting and I was sure this time I would never find the words to speak. Always being the dutiful daughter, friend, student, wife and mother... I raised myself out of bed. The day as always moved along slowly and no one called upon the sad little house housing a sad little woman. The world kept spinning and I had been foolish to think for one day it would stop for her.

"I would have come earlier..." Remus began. "Last night was a full moon... but I came as soon as I could."

I nod and force a weak smile, hoping it will absolve him of the guilt I know he must feel. Even in our school days Remus was always the one who felt more remorse than he should. I tentatively hand him the picture before he could say more and took a step back.

"She was always such a beautiful one." He says quietly looking at the picture..

It was a picture my husband Elias had taken shortly after her birth. Myself, a few years younger and so much pain ago holding a swaddled pink cheeked infant; Joy. My greatest and most tragic achievement. She was my baby girl, my light, my everything. Emmeline, the perpetually stoic one who never leaped in happiness and would never let the world see her cry, had began blubbering like a child when the Healer laid her in my arms for the first time. It was the moment Elias had taken the picture and at the time all I could think of was how I never before felt such a pure happiness. I had leaned towards Elias and told him that small little baby was my joy. We named her Anna after his mother, but to us she was always called Joy.

"Elias filed for divorce yesterday..." I tell Remus because I do not know what else to say and the silence begins to weigh heavily on me. "He says he can not keep living in this pain, in her memory, with me..."

Remus steps toward me and pulls me in an embrace as another wave of heartbroken sobs wrack my body. "She is gone... truly gone and no one cares." I tell him between sobs and breaths. "A year less a day since her death and he can just move on without me, without her..."

My tears seep in to his shirt and I know I should pull myself together, go back to the woman who could feel much more than she'd ever admit out loud, the woman who could smile at the appropriate times, provide sympathy when needed but always carried her stoic demeanor. If I could just go back to the girl I had been, bright, social enough, but always a bit distant with my emotions and others, maybe I could move on. At Joy's funeral Dumbledore told me every beginning has an end, but this felt so wrong. No matter how I tried, it just felt wrong, like I was caught in the middle of the wrong place at the wrong time and nothing made any sense.

"People grieve differently Em..." Remus began before I cut him off.

"I just do not understand how everyone can just move on..." I said in a strangled voice. "I was the one who held it together to make the arrangements, the one who held him... I never cried in those early days. I held it together and now... I just want to hold her again... and I thought I could move on, but I am stuck and I do not understand how the world keeps moving."

Remus rubbed my back, still embracing me, giving me the human contact I so desperately need. I had been the one who held Elias as he cried like a baby at Joy's bedside at St. Mungo's when the Healer told us she had a brain disease that not even magic could fix, the one who held her as she passed while Elias and my parents sobbed in a corner, the one who delivered her Eulogy with my back straight and my eyes dry because I needed to be the strong one.

Now, I felt weak. The magnitude of her truly being gone suddenly hit me a few weeks ago on what would have been her fifth birthday. All my strength was for nothing because in the end it meant nothing. It never brought her back. Elias was finally moving on and he did not know know what to do with his always strong wife that one day woke up crying and simply couldn't stop. He had reached a point he could find solace in the fact she was in a better place, and I was nothing more than a hinder to that. Now he was moving on without me or her.

"We fought for a better life... I held off on having children because the war needed me..." I continued sobbing. "But for what? James, Lily, Marlene, Benjy, Dorcas and so many others dead to do what...? Make a better world? For whom? We said for our children, our future children, for their children."

My mind filled with thoughts that have been haunting me for days. Lucius Malfoy was a known and exceptionally callous death eater, but one fabricated story later and enough fashionable remorse and he is free to go home to his son every night. Molly Weasley bore seven, more than enough to spare one but she is able to tuck all of them in bed each night. No matter how hard Elias and I tried, even with magical intervention I was only able to conceive Joy and now I do not even have her. I used to believe in a sense of underlying justice in the world, but now I am not so naive. Nothing about this world is fair.

"You couldn't have known Em..." Remus put a hand to my cheek and tilted my head to look in to his eyes. "Anna lived a great life, she knew love, she knew you... that is so much more than most get."

I clung to Remus harder wondering why it seemed like tragedy is what always entwined us. The first time I had taken notice of the quiet boy two years below me was the day he received news of his father's death and I as a prefect had escorted him to the headmaster's office. He had reached out for my hand and squeezed it tightly. I do not think we had ever spoken two words to one another before then. Years later, when so many people in the Order were dying, I was the one he reached out to because he yearned to be near someone like me who could remain stoic and not fall apart like many others. It was I who dragged him back in to reality after the murder of James and Lily. Now, on the anniversary of my only child's death he was the only one who came to let me know not everyone forgot.

"It just hurts so bad. I want the world to stop for one damn day!" I yelled pulling away from him and spinning around to point at all of her things and the mess I made. "It hurts so much more than it ever has Remus... I thought if Elias and I could just stay together, leave her room untouched, I would eventually wake up and realize it was a dream... that is never going to happen is it?"

I turned back to Remus who shook his head, failing to find words. We stared at one another for several moments while I felt the last piece of me holding on to hope she would return shatter. I could feel the last piece of her that my soul clung to rip away and I desperately reached out for her bed post so I would not be swallowed deep in to a dark abyss. My heart screamed in pain and my lungs momentarily refused to breathe without Joy in this world. It was several long moments before my lungs would continue to function. It was more than the world gave me, there was never a short halt in its rotation.

I gazed around Joy's room, the teddy bear she named Mr. Bug, the model dollhouse of Hogwarts Elias had built for her, her favourite books... all of it was now nothing but stuff.

"Could you help me pack her room?" I asked Remus softly.

He looked around the room, I could tell he was weighing it heavily as if he did not know if it was for the best or not. "If that is what you want, if you are sure." Remus finally replied.

I nodded. My heart hurt, my eyes burned from the tears and my very core ached at the knowledge the world would never stop spinning no matter how much I demanded it to. My world had fallen apart when she passed, but my body was just finally catching up to that fact. The pain pierced every piece of me and I did not know if I would ever find solace in this world again.

Remus moved towards me pulling out his wand. I raised a hand to stop him.

"Can we do it by hand please?" I asked him.

Remus nodded, not waiting for a reason and began moving around the room carefully beginning to gather Joy's possessions. I moved with him in spite of the deep routed pain that threatened to freeze me in time forever.

Remus and I continued packing through out the evening, carefully burying away everything that was truly nothing now.


End file.
